20 MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY 



should learn to speak Spanish, sent down *for all the 

 young gentlemen', as the middies are called, and com- 

 menced to ask us one by one — 'Can you speak Spanish?' 

 'No, sir.' 'Then you are no gentleman'. 'Can you?' 

 But always receiving the same answer, he sent us out of 

 the cabin as a set of blackguards. As he was as ignorant 

 on this subject as any of us, we included him among the 

 number, and thought it an excellent joke. Thus ended 

 our scholastic duties on that ship. I was afterwards 

 transferred to another vessel in which the schoolmaster 

 was a young lawyer, who knew more about jetsam and 

 flotsam than about lunars and dead reckoning — at least, 

 I presume so, for he never afforded us an opportunity 

 to judge of his knowledge on the latter subjects. He 

 was not on speaking terms with the reefers, ate up all 

 the plums for the duff, and was finally turned out of the 

 ship as a nuisance. When I went to sea again, the 

 teacher was an amiable and accomplished young man, 

 from the 'land of schoolmasters and leather pumpkin 

 seed'. Poor fellow! — far gone in consumption, had a 

 field of usefulness been open to him, he could not have 

 labored in it. He went to sea for his health, but never 

 returned. There was no schoolmaster in the next ship, 

 and the 'young gentlemen' were as expert at lunars, and 

 as au fait in the mysteries of latitude and departure, as 

 any I had seen. In my next ship, the dominie was a 

 young man, troubled like some of your correspondents, 

 Mr. Editor, with cacoethes scrihendi. He wrote a book. 

 But I never saw him teaching 'the young idea', or in- 

 structing the young gentlemen in the art of plain sailing; 

 nor did I think it was his fault, for he had neither school- 

 room nor pupil. Such is my experience of the school 



